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GoDaddy domains doing just fine during pandemic, lays off hundreds anyway

Kevin Murphy, June 30, 2020, 21:19:51 (UTC), Domain Registrars

GoDaddy has announced hundreds of lay-offs as part of a restructuring made necessary by the coronavirus pandemic, but it says its domain name business is still doing pretty well.

The market-leading registrar late last week announced changes that will affect 814 of its US-based employees.

Hundreds will be laid off. Others will be offered jobs in states a thousand miles away from home.

But at the same time, GoDaddy increased its estimates for second-quarter revenue, saying its domain business is doing okay.

The main victims of the restructuring are those in outbound sales, employees who cold-call customers to up-sell them on high-margin products such as GoDaddy Social, a social media management service.

Because GoDaddy Social isn’t selling well any more, apparently due to the pandemic, 331 staff are losing their jobs.

There are another 213 employees, currently based in GoDaddy’s native Arizona, that will be moved into customer support roles — which for GoDaddy is also a up-sell role — instead.

Another 135 sales staff based in Iowa will be told to move to Arizona — well over 1,000 miles away — or lose their jobs.

GoDaddy will be closing both of its two offices in Austin, Texas.

Despite the carnage, the company seems to be treating its affected employees quite well by American standards.

They’ll all get paid until at least September 1, and get healthcare benefits (because this is America, where healthcare is a privilege that has to be earned by phone-jockeying) up to the end of the year.

GoDaddy had previously promised it staff that there would be no layoffs in Q2.

The company also said last week that it will make 1% more revenue that it had previously expected.

It now expects $790 million in Q2, up 1% on its previous guidance.

That increase is, according to GoDaddy, due to sales of domains and web sites.

This coincides with other industry evidence that domain sales are doing okay right now.


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Comments (3)

  1. steve brady says:

    IT Engineer’s whose resume listed “Adobe PDF” under SKILLS with a “Proven Track Record” got fired.

  2. Reviewu says:

    Their abuse mitigation is ridiculous and needs reviewing by ICANN. GoDaddy are surely ranked at the top for not addressing abuse emails with priority – More malicious users are now using them due to this. Sad times.

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